Love That Bunch by Aline Kominsky-Crumb

The early work of the pioneering feminist cartoonist plus her acclaimed new story “Dream House”

Aline Kominsky-Crumb immediately made her mark in the Bay Area’s underground comix scene with unabashedly raw, dirty, unfiltered comics chronicling the thoughts and desires of a woman coming of age in the 60’s. Kominsky-Crumb didn’t worry about self-flattery. In fact, her darkest secrets and deepest insecurities were all the more fodder for groundbreaking stories. Her exaggerated comix alter-ego, Bunch, is self-destructive and grotesque but crackles with the self-deprecating humor and honesty of a cartoonist confident in the story she wants to tell.

Collecting comics from the 1970s through today, Love That Bunch is shockingly prescient while still being an authentic story of its era. Kominsky-Crumb was ahead of her time in juxtaposing the contradictory nature of female sexuality with a proud, complicated feminism. Most importantly, she does so without apology.

Kominsky-Crumb traces her steps from a Beatles loving fangirl, East Village groupie, an adult grappling with her childhood, an 80s housewife and mother, to a new 30-page story Dream House that looks back on her childhood, 40 years later. One of the most famous and idiosyncratic cartoonists of our times, Love That Bunch will be Kominsky-Crumb’s only solo-authored book in print. Originally published as a book in 1990, this new expanded edition follows Kominsky-Crumb to the present, including an afterword penned by noted comics scholar Hillary Chute.

Praise for Love That Bunch

One could argue that without Kominsky-Crumb’s groundbreaking autobiographical comics, Hannah Horvath wouldn’t exist.

Love That Bunch, a compilation of works from the 1970s through the 2010s, reads like a blueprint of contemporary women’s comedy… It’s a form of fearless authenticity that’s now practically commonplace.

[There is a] pioneering quality of Ms. Kominsky-Crumb’s own work — nakedly self-revealing and self-obsessed years ahead of the rest of the culture... her messy self-examinations seem even more relevant today.

Today the significance of Kominsky-Crumb’s oeuvre — not only to emerging comics artists but also to writers and comedians well outside the comics industry — cannot be overstated… Almost 50 years into her career, Kominsky-Crumb is an underground hero whose enduring influence isn’t quite so underground.